From the eighteenth century on, Italy was an obligatory part of the Grand Tour for artists and non-artists alike, not only for the wealth of Old Master art to be seen in its palaces and churches or for the traces of antiquity visible throughout the peninsula but also for the landscape itself—the sites where myths were supposed to have taken place, where classical texts were set, and where crucial events in Roman history unfolded.

A similar sentiment, of seeing in person a street or landmark with which one is indirectly – but, in a sense, intimately – familiar, often grips me as I wander around London. As I grew up, most of my reading, both of literary classics and of more frivolous literature, was set in England - in London and the surrounding countryside in particular. As the depictions of places and the way I imagined them, which has been etched in my mind, are melded with my view of their real locations, I often have a feeling of reverence, maybe not because of the locations' intrinsic importance, but because the final touches are being added to the visual edifices that make up much of my childhood.

Favourite Quotes

"To my mind, this is irregular. It is un-English; it is un-American; it is French." Mark Twain: Concerning The Jews, Harper's Magazine, March 1898

"This is the sort of pedantry up with which I will not put." Winston Churchill: Pencilled in the margin of a minute issued by a civil servant who was objecting to the ending of a sentence with a preposition and the use of a dangling participle in official documents.

"To those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catchphrase, the U-turn, I have only one thing to say: You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning!" Margaret Thatcher: Conservative Party conference speech, Brighton, 10 October 1980

"Who was that lad they used to try to make me read at Oxford? Ship- Shop- Schopenhauer. That’s the name. A grouch of the most pronounced description." P. G. Wodehouse: Carry On, Jeeves – Clustering Round Young Bingo

"Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city." George Burns

"Never give in - never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy." Winston Churchill: Harrow School speech, 29 October 1941

"The profits of 'protection' go altogether to a few score select persons—who, by favors of Congress, State legislatures, the banks, and other special advantages, are forming a vulgar aristocracy, full as bad as anything in the British or European castes, of blood, or the dynasties there of the past." Walt Whitman: Prose Works, III. Notes Left Over - 11. Who Gets the Plunder?

"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." Winston Churchill: House of Commons speech on August 20, 1940. (at the peak of the Battle of Britain, referring to the RAF airmen)

"And who knows? Somewhere out in this audience may even be someone who will one day follow in my footsteps, and preside over the White House as the President's spouse – and I wish him well." Barbara Bush: Wellesley College commencement address, 1 June 1990

"We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields, and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender!" Winston Churchill: House of Commons speech, June 4 1940 (referring to Dunkirk)

"Earnestly hope we shall not have another war with meat-coupons and no sugar and people being killed – ridiculous and unnecessary. Wonder whether Mussolini's mother spanked him too much or too little - you never know, these psychological days." Dorothy Sayers: Busman'sHoneymoon - Diaries of the Dowager Duchess of Denver

"The gunfire around us makes it hard to hear. But the human voice is different from other sounds. It can be heard over noises that bury everything else. Even when it's not shouting. Even when it's just a whisper. Even the lowest whisper can be heard over armies – when it's telling the truth." Sydney Pollack et al.: The Interpreter [2005] (Dedication from the memoirs of Edmond Zuwanie)

"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile – hoping it will eat him last." Winston Churchill